March 23, 2021 Reanne Duffy

Bristol based signs and graphics manufacturer N3 gets its hands on a container they’ve seen before…

Shipping containers start their long, working lives as massive steel fabrications which are, by design, required to endure the extremes encountered during lengthy, exposed passages at sea. Perhaps it's their tough exterior, vast interior space, or lasting quality, but they seem to find new lives of their own well off the intended career path after they've gone to sea for the last time.

Repurposed containers serve as stables. People convert them into so-called ‘tiny houses’ - Google that, you’ll be amazed. Landmark-scale buildings have also been constructed from stacked and interlocked containers and are permanent parts of the man-made landscape around us.

Bristol-based signs and graphics manufacturer, N3 has found itself involved with a few containers over the years. One of its clients, The Tunnel House Inn had one and N3 branded and decorated it for the business a few years back. More recently, N3 got to grips with the very same container again in order to rebrand, and re-purpose it for a new mission.

The container’s new destiny was to be as a towed, roadside sales station for pizza. The Kitchen Garden Pizza Company was the multi-talented box’s new ID and it fell to the equally talented N3 team to make it happen.

The design was prescribed to N3 but needed a bit of work to make it practical. With all of the ins and outs of the oversized corrugations that make containers the big, stiff and extremely durable boxes they are, the flanks and faces are actually longer than the physical space the container occupies. That took some sorting.

The next challenge was an assault on the well weathered graphics that needed removing from the container. It didn't take the N3 team long to return the container to its fresh state and work could then begin bringing it back to life.

The N3 team decided to use Metamark’s MetaWrap MD-X and its matching laminate for the job and it covers pretty much every visible inch of the huge steel box. The side adjacent to the tow-bar wasn't included in the exercise on the basis it gets absolutely hammered by road rash and so is always dirty, and is the least visible anyway.

The graphics, which were printed on MD-X and then contour-cut, sit in a contrasting field of blue, printed MD-X which comprises the total coverage background matter. MetaWrap MD-X copes brilliantly with the challenging surface and N3’s expertise as a wide format graphics printer shines out of the job too.

Containers don’t typically have complex or compound curves to negotiate but are considered challenging nonetheless. It falls to the applicator to make sure that the graphics work harmoniously within the convoluted surfaces that comprise the flanks of the container. N3 has some experience in this regard, and it shows.

N3 is well known as a signs and graphics manufacturer in the Southwest, but as the container testifies, can lend its hand to pretty much anything. No two days are the same when your doors are open to anything that might happen to pass and N3 took its container mission in its stride.